Trudy Gold
Racial Madness in Vienna
Summary
Trudy Gold discusses and contextualizes the growth in racial tensions in Vienna in the late 1800s.
Trudy Gold
Trudy Gold was the CEO of the London Jewish Cultural Centre and a founding member of the British delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Throughout her career she taught modern Jewish history at schools, universities, and to adult groups and ran seminars on Holocaust education in the UK, Eastern Europe, and China. She also led Jewish educational tours all over the world. Trudy was the educational director of the student resources “Understanding the Holocaust” and “Holocaust Explained” and the author of The Timechart History of Jewish Civilization.
Look, what can I say? I don’t really want to, Tibal, what on earth can I say to crass ignorance and prejudice? Except it’s rather tragic and it means that we’ve got an awful lot of work to do, haven’t we? Maybe … How can I say this without making everybody feel totally depressed? I, you see, my greatest friend was Robert Wistrich, who he headed up the study of antisemitism in Jerusalem. He’s written the definitive works on antisemitism, unfortunately he died in 2014. And I know how dark it got for him. And he said, “But Trudy, there is a spiritual destiny of the Jewish people. We are the children of destiny.” He wasn’t a religious man, by the way, but he did believe in this destiny of the Jew to try and make the world a better place. And so don’t despair. Please don’t despair. There’s these … “It’s the students in American universities are making life difficult for Jewish students.” Well, we’re not preparing our Jewish students well enough, are we? If they knew their own history, they could counter it.
You’re looking for logic. I’m not going into all of that. I’m only using the term, because that’s the term that was used to describe Jews. I do not believe Jews are a race for the simple reason, I don’t believe in the concept of pure races.